He studied tirelessly under Cho Hoon-hyun, who kept a library of more than a thousand books on baduk. Lee Chang-ho used to study until 2 to 3 o'clock in the morning every day, reading those books one by one. Around 5:00 a.m. one day, Cho woke up and went to the bathroom. He found the light in Lee's room still on and was about turn it off when he was surprised by the sound of a baduk stone Lee had just put on the board.

More than 1000 books doesn't seem like so many to me. I have more than 3000 books (of all kinds) in my house, including around 250 go books. I can believe 1000+ go books easily for someone of Cho's stature.

There is an old saying: if you know how much money you have then you are not rich. Well, if you know how many books you have then you don't have enough. I don't have a clue how many be have in our house but several years ago I estimated it to be 6000+. About 250 were English-language go books.

I think the point of the story has been totalled missed. It's not about bragging rights. Until quite recently the number of go books in Korea was tiny.The point being made (apart from the one about Stakhanovite Yi) is surely that Yi Ch'ang-ho was very lucky to have someone in Korea who had been in an almost unique position, as a player in Japan and in pre-Amazon days, to acquire so many books. Most of them would have been in Japanese, I imagine, but that's not much of a problem for well educated Koreans. Shades, also, of that other genius, Go Seigen, studying mostly Japanese books.

err, you mean 6000+ of all kind of books right? They aren't all Go books...

I am just amazed by the number of books you guys have, and I thought I have a lot of go books, about 30+, and that number is amazingly huge.

You simply don't understand the ways of bibliophiles. Any interest in anything at all is simply an excuse to buy books about it. If you still can maneuver freely without constantly stumbling over book piles, you don't have enough.

YES



30 is not so many. I have about 40 left over that no one seemed to want when I sold the rest.

One thing to bear in mind: while professionals or students may do "easy" problems for practice, there's still probably a gap between the books we'd collect and the books they'd collect. No well worn copies of "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"...

One thing to bear in mind: while professionals or students may do "easy" problems for practice, there's still probably a gap between the books we'd collect and the books they'd collect. No well worn copies of "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go"...